For Immediate Release

United Nations Votes on Principles to Prevent Debt Crises

WASHINGTON - The United Nations General Assembly will likely vote in favor today on principles to guide economies facing financial distress. A UN committee approved the principles this summer as part of broader UN efforts to create a global bankruptcy process for countries.

"The United Nations is acting because it sees how countries are negatively impacted by debt crises," said Eric LeCompte, executive director of Jubilee USA Network, a religious development coalition. LeCompte advised the UN on the principles.

The UN voted 124-11 last September to develop a bankruptcy process amidst debt crises in Greece, the Caribbean and Argentina. During the process, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) released a road map report on guiding restructuring processes. That report led this summer to a UN committee approving nine debt restructuring principles, including good faith, transparency, impartiality, equitable treatment of debt holders and sustainability. The General Assembly will vote today on adopting those principles.

"Debt crises hurt poor people in every corner of the world," noted LeCompte, who consulted on the UNCTAD road map. "The UN is laying a framework to eventually offer bankruptcy protection to countries just as cities and states are protected in the United States." Read the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Sovereign Debt Restructuring Processes' nine principles.

Jubilee USA Network is an alliance of more than 75 US organizations and 650 faith communities working with 50 Jubilee global partners. Jubilee USA builds an economy that serves, protects and promotes the participation of the most vulnerable. Jubilee USA wins critical global financial reforms and won more than $130 billion in debt relief to benefit the world's poorest people. www.jubileeusa.org

Further

Whew. That was way too close for comfort. And yeah, the country's in a sorry state to have come to this. But not only does Doug Jones become the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in Alabama in 25 years; his win is a blunt rejection of all the hate-mongering, gay-bashing, race-baiting, sexual-assaulting, serial lying crap of losers Moore and Trump and Bannon and their ugly ilk. Forward to mid-terms. And once and for all, to Moore in all his evil: "Fuck you and the horse you (badly) rode in on."